The Pivot of Civilization eBook

regiments, universal brotherhood, red republics, or
unexampled revolutions; we may strangle and murder
each other, we may persecute and despise those whose
sexual necessities force them to break through our
unnatural moral codes; we may burn alive if we please
the prostitutes and the adulterers; we may break our
own and our neighbor’s hearts against the adamantine
laws that surround us, but not one step, not one shall
we advance, till we acknowledge these laws, and adopt
the only possible mode in which they can be obeyed.”
These words were written in 1854. Recent events
have accentuated their stinging truth.

(1) Marx: “Capital.”
Vol. I, p. 675.

(2) Op. cit. pp, 695,
707, 709.

(3) Fabian Essays in
Socialism. p. 21.

(4) Uncontrolled Breeding,
By Adelyne More. p. 84.

(5) For a sympathetic treatment of
modern psychological research as bearing on Communism,
by two convinced Communists see “Creative
Revolution,” by Eden and Cedar Paul.

(6) Neo-Malthusianisme
et Socialisme, p. 22.

CHAPTER VIII: Dangers of Cradle Competition

Eugenics has been defined as “the study of agencies
under social control that may improve or impair the
racial qualities of future generations, either mentally
or physically.” While there is no inherent
conflict between Socialism and Eugenics, the latter
is, broadly, the antithesis of the former. In
its propaganda, Socialism emphasizes the evil effects
of our industrial and economic system. It insists
upon the necessity of satisfying material needs, upon
sanitation, hygiene, and education to effect the transformation
of society. The Socialist insists that healthy
humanity is impossible without a radical improvement
of the social—­and therefore of the economic
and industrial—­environment. The Eugenist
points out that heredity is the great determining factor
in the lives of men and women. Eugenics is the
attempt to solve the problem from the biological and
evolutionary point of view. You may ring all the
changes possible on “Nurture” or environment,
the Eugenist may say to the Socialist, but comparatively
little can be effected until you control biological
and hereditary elements of the problem. Eugenics
thus aims to seek out the root of our trouble, to
study humanity as a kinetic, dynamic, evolutionary
organism, shifting and changing with the successive
generations, rising and falling, cleansing itself of
inherent defects, or under adverse and dysgenic influences,
sinking into degeneration and deterioration.